1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to particle separation, and, in particular, to a particle separation device referred to herein as a magnetocentrifuge and the use of the magnetocentrifuge to separate particles, such as proteins, DNA strands and other charged biological macromolecules.
2. Description of the Related Art
Centrifugal forces are commonly utilized for separating macromolecules on the basis of mass or density. Molecules to be separated are spun at high speeds in cuvettes whereby they encounter centrifugal forces of graded levels based on the speed of rotation, mass or density of the particles, and density of the medium. Ultracentrifuges capable of spinning at more than 100,000 rpm are universally utilized in biological and biotechnological laboratories.
Biological macromolecules are also invariably characterized by charge on them, and techniques such as electrophoresis take advantage of charge (as well as size) to separate various species. Novel applications based on the influence of magnetic and electric fields have been proposed before, for applications such as containment of charged particles. Recently, magnetic fields were shown to alter the mobility of particles under electrophoretic conditions. However, in view of very small electrophoretic mobilities, the changes were not significant.
The principle of Lorentz force is commonly used in particle accelerators as well as mass spectrometers. However, these instruments work on very small ionic species in vacuum, and have not been found suitable for studying large biological molecules such as proteins and DNA, and other methods such as electrophoresis or chromatography are preferred.